HMS Royal Charis, 58, and Archbishop's Palace, City of Tellesberg, Kingdom of Old Charis "Thank God," Nahrmahn Baytz said with quiet, heartfelt fervor as he watched the Tellesberg waterfront creep steadily (if slowly) closer. "I've come to the conclusion, all of Nahrmahn Gareyt's dreadful novels about buccaneer kingdoms notwithstanding, that while I may be an island prince, I am not a swashbuckling one."

"Don't worry," Cayleb Ahrmahk reassured him. "I doubt anyone's going to expect you to be one. In fact, the mind boggles at the thought."

"Oh?" Nahrmahn looked at his emperor with raised eyebrows. "Are you implying that I cut a less than romantic figure, Your Majesty?"

"Heavens, no!" Cayleb looked shocked at the suggestion. "As a matter of fact, I think you cut a much more romantic figure than you did before we left Cherayth. Or a considerably thinner one, anyway."

"Don't tease him, Your Majesty," Princess Ohlyvya scolded. "And as for you, Nahrmahn, you cut quite romantic enough a figure for me. And I'd better not catch you cutting romantic figures for anyone else!"

"Somehow I don't think you're saving him from being teased, Ohlyvya," Cayleb pointed out.

"I didn't say I was trying to. With all due respect, Your Majesty, I was simply pointing out that he belongs to me. If there's any teasing to do, I'll do it."

Cayleb smiled, although it was true Nahrmahn had dropped quite a few pounds during the long, strenuous voyage. He didn't doubt for a moment that the Emeraldian could scarcely wait to get his feet on dry land once more.

If the truth be told, Cayleb was more anxious than usual to get ashore himself. The trip from Chisholm had been the most exhausting voyage he could remember, with one ugly storm after another, and his role as a mere passenger had kept him effectively confined below decks the entire time. For some reason, Captain Gyrard seemed to object to having his sovereign on the quarterdeck when everyone had to be lashed into place with lifelines. After the first couple of real blows, Cayleb had discovered he lacked the heart to overrule the captain's obviously sincere (and worried) objections and accepted his banishment below. Not that the captain hadn't had a valid point, he supposed. The mountainous seas had frequently reared as high as twenty-five or thirty feet, and their power had been mind-numbing. The unending succession of impacts had left Royal Charis' crew and passengers feeling as if they'd been beaten black and blue, and the ship's carpenter had been kept busy dealing with a host of minor repairs. The boatswain had been kept busy, as well, as sails and gear carried away aloft, and one of their escorting galleons had disappeared for three days. If not for the imagery from Merlin's SNARCs, Cayleb would have assumed she'd gone down, and at one point, as his flagship had driven before the wind under nothing but bare poles, giving up heartbreaking miles of her hard-won western progress, he hadn't been at all sure Royal Charis wasn't going to founder herself-a point he'd been very careful not to discuss with Sharleyan at the time.

The main reason he wanted off the ship, though, had nothing to do with all of that and everything to do with the tasks awaiting him. One of them, in particular, promised to be especially ticklish, and the timing window for it was going to be interesting.

He watched the oared galleys that served as tugs rowing strongly out to meet his flagship and heard the cheers of welcome rising from their companies and his smile grew a bit broader.

"Just be patient, Nahrmahn," he said soothingly. "We'll have you ashore in no time. Unless one of those tugs accidentally rams us and sinks us, of course."

Sir Rayjhis Yowance, Earl of Gray Harbor, was generally recognized as the First Councilor of the Empire of Charis, although the title tended to change off with Baron Green Mountain when the court was in Cherayth. Now he stood watching the galleys nudge Royal Charis closer to the stone quay and felt a vast surge of relief. Throwing lines flew ashore, followed by thick hawsers that dropped over the waiting bollards. The ship took tension on the mooring hawsers with her own capstans, fenders squeaked and groaned between her and the quay's tall side, and a gangplank went across to her bulwark-level entry port.

Gray Harbor had commanded his own ship in his time, and he recognized the signs of heavy weather when he saw them. Much of the galleon's paint had been stripped away to expose patches of raw wood; sea slime streaked her hull; one of her quarter boats was missing, the falls lashed tightly across the davits where the sea had stove in the vanished boat; the railing of her sternwalk had been badly damaged; two of her topsails had the newer, less stained look of replacement canvas; and one of her forward gunport lids had been replaced by the ship's carpenter. The bare, unpainted wood looked like a missing tooth in the neat row of the galleon's gunports, and as he looked at the other four galleons of her escort, he saw equal or worse signs of how hard their voyage had been.

I know that boy has an iron stomach, the earl reflected, but I'll bet even he had his anxious moments on this one. Thank God I didn't know anything about it until he got here! I've got gray hairs enough as it is.

Gray Harbor knew he tended to worry about what Cayleb airily called "the details" of keeping the Empire running. That was his job, when it came down to it, and he was well aware that whatever Cayleb might call them, the emperor knew exactly how important they truly were. Nonetheless, there were times he felt a distinct temptation to say "I told you so," and looking at the battered ship at quayside was definitely one of those moments.

I don't care how much sense it made from a diplomatic perspective, he thought now, sourly, this nonsense about their spending half the year here in Tellesberg and the other half in Cherayth is just that-nonsense! Ships sink-even the best of them, sometimes, damn it-and if anyone should've known that, it's Cayleb Ahrmahk. But, no, he had to throw that into the marriage proposal, too. And then he and Sharley-and Alahnah-go sailing back and forth on the same damned ship. So if it sinks, we lose all three of them!

He knew he was being silly, and he didn't really care. Not at the moment. And he didn't feel any particular responsibility to be rational, either. Certainly, this time Sharleyan was on a different ship ... but that only meant she'd have the opportunity to sink on her own on the way back from Corisande. Assuming, he reminded himself, HMS Dawn Star hadn't already sunk somewhere in the Chisholm Sea, taking Empress and Crown Princess with her.

Oh, stop that!

He shook his head, feeling his disapproving frown disappearing into a grin as Cayleb Ahrmahk came bounding down the gangplank in complete disregard of the careful formality of an emperor's proper arrival in his capital city. The trumpeters, as surprised as anyone by Cayleb's diversion from the anticipated order of disembarkation, began a belated fanfare as the youthful monarch's feet found the quay. Half the assembled courtiers looked offended, another quarter looked surprised, and the remainder were roaring as lustily with laughter as any of the galleon's seamen or watching longshoremen.

You're not going to change them ... and even if you could, you know you really wouldn't, Gray Harbor told himself. Besides, it's part of the magic. And-his expression sobered-it's part of their legend. Part of what makes this whole thing work, and they wouldn't have it if God hadn't given it to them. So why don't you just do what they obviously do and trust God to go on getting it right?

"Welcome home, Your Maj-" he began, starting a formal bow, only to be interrupted as a pair of powerful arms which were obviously as unconcerned with protocol as the rest of the emperor enveloped him in a huge hug.

"It's good to be home, Rayjhis!" a voice said in his ear. The arms around him tightened, two sinewy hands thumped him once each on the back, hard, and then Cayleb stood back. He laid those hands on Gray Harbor's shoulders, looking into his face, and smiled that enormous, infectious Ahrmahk smile.

"What say you and I get back to the Palace out of all this racket"-he twitched his head to take in the cheering crowds who were doing their best to deafen everyone in Tellesberg-"and find ourselves some tall, cold drinks while we catch each other up on all the news?"

"Thank you for joining us, Paityr," Archbishop Maikel Staynair said as Bryahn Ushyr ushered Paityr Wylsynn into his office once again.

The intendant began to smile in acknowledgment, but then his face went suddenly neutral as he realized Hainryk Waignair, the elderly Bishop of Tellesberg, and Emperor Cayleb were already present.

"As you can see," Staynair continued, watching Wylsynn's expression, "we've been joined by a couple of additional guests. That's because we have something rather ... unusual to discuss with you. Something which may require quite a lot of convincing, I'm afraid. So, please, come in and have a seat. You, too, Bryahn."

Ushyr seemed unsurprised by the invitation, and he touched Wylsynn's elbow, startling the young Schuelerite back into motion. The two of them crossed to Staynair's desk to kiss his ring respectfully, then settled into two of the three still unoccupied chairs arranged to face the archbishop and his other guests.

"Allow me to add my thanks to Maikel's, Father," Cayleb said. "And not just for joining us today. I'm well aware of how much my House and my Kingdom-the entire Empire-owe to your compassion and open-mindedness. To be honest, that awareness is one of the reasons for this meeting."

"I beg your pardon, Your Majesty?" Wylsynn's expression was a combination of surprise and puzzlement.

The emperor had arrived back in Tellesberg only yesterday afternoon, and with all that had happened since he and the empress had left Old Charis for Chisholm, there must have been a virtual whirlwind of details and decisions requiring his attention. So what was he doing anywhere except the halls of Tellesberg Palace? If he wanted to meet with Archbishop Maikel or any of the rest of them, he could easily have summoned them to the palace rather than meeting them here. For that matter, how had he gotten to Archbishop Maikel's office without anyone noticing it? And where were the Imperial Guardsmen who should be keeping an eye on him?

"In answer to one of the several questions I'm sure are swirling around inside that active brain of yours," Cayleb said, "there's a tunnel between Tellesberg Palace and the Cathedral. It's been there for the better part of two centuries now, and I'm not the first monarch who's made use of it. Admittedly, we're using it quite a bit more now than we used to, and we never made use of the tunnel between the Cathedral and the Archbishop's Palace before the, um, recent change in management." He smiled infectiously. "I wouldn't be a bit surprised to discover there were similar tunnels between a lot of cathedrals and a lot of palaces. Prince Nahrmahn's confirmed that there's one in Eraystor, at any rate."

"I see, Your Majesty." Wylsynn knew his voice still sounded puzzled, and Cayleb chuckled.

"You see that much, you mean, Father," he said. "You're still at sea about the rest of it, though, aren't you?"

"I'm afraid so, Your Majesty," Wylsynn admitted.

"All will become clear shortly, Father. In fact," the emperor's expression sobered suddenly, "a great many things are about to become clear to you. Before we get into that, however, Maikel has a few things to say to you."

Cayleb sat back in his chair, passing the conversation over to the archbishop, and Wylsynn turned to look at the head of the Church of Charis.

"What we're about to tell you, Father," Staynair's voice was as sober as the emperor's expression, "is going to come as a shock. In fact, even someone with your faith is going to find parts of it very difficult to believe ... or to accept, at least. And I know-know from personal, firsthand experience, believe me-that it will completely change the way in which you look at the world. The decision to tell you wasn't lightly made, nor was it made solely by the men you see in this room at this moment. The truth is that I sent you to Saint Zherneau's for more than one reason, my son. I did send you there because of the spiritual crisis you faced, and I was absolutely honest with you when I told you I'd experienced a similar crisis many years ago and found answers to it at Saint Zherneau's.

"What I didn't tell you at that time was the way in which what I learned at Saint Zherneau's changed my faith. I believe it broadened and deepened that faith, yet honesty compels me to say it might just as easily have destroyed my belief forever, had it been presented to me in even a slightly different fashion. And the second reason I sent you to Father Zhon and Father Ahbel was to give them the opportunity to meet you. To come to know you. To be brutally honest, to evaluate you ... and how you might react to the same knowledge."

Wylsynn sat very still, eyes fixed on the archbishop's face, and somewhere deep inside he felt a taut, singing tension. That tension rose, twisting higher and tighter, and his right hand wrapped its fingers around his pectoral scepter.

"The reason for this meeting tonight is that the Brethren decided it would be best to share that same knowledge with you. Not the safest thing to do, perhaps, and not necessarily the wisest, but the best. The Brethren feel-as I do-that you deserve that knowledge, yet it's also a two-edged sword. There are dangers in what we're about to tell you, my son, and not just spiritual ones. There are dangers for us, for you, and for all the untold millions of God's children living on this world or who may ever live upon it, and I fear it may bring you great pain. Yet I also believe it will ultimately bring you even greater joy, and in either case, I would never inflict it upon you if not for my deep belief that one of the reasons God sent you to Charis in the first place was to receive exactly this knowledge."

He paused, and Wylsynn drew a shaky breath. He looked around the other faces, saw the same solemnity in all of them, and a part of him wanted to stop the archbishop before he could utter another word. There was something terrifying about the stillness, about those expressions, and he realized he believed every word Staynair had already said. Yet behind his terror, beyond the fear, lay something else. Trust.

"If your purpose was to impress me with the seriousness of whatever you're about to tell me, Your Eminence, you've succeeded," he said after a moment, and felt almost surprised his voice didn't quiver around the edges.

"Good," Cayleb said, reclaiming the thread of the conversation, and Wylsynn's eyes went to the emperor. "But before we get any further into this, there's one other person who needs to be party to the discussion."

Wylsynn's eyebrows rose, but before he could frame the question, even to himself, the door between Staynair's spacious office and Ushyr's much more humble adjoining cubicle opened and a tall, blue-eyed man in the cuirass and chain mail of the Imperial Guard stepped through it.

The intendant's eyes widened in shock and disbelief. Everyone in Tellesberg knew Merlin Athrawes had been sent to Zebediah and Corisande to protect Empress Sharleyan and Crown Princess Alahnah. At that moment, he was almost seven thousand miles from Tellesberg Palace as a wyvern might have flown. He couldn't possibly be here!

Yet he was.

"Good afternoon, Father Paityr," Merlin said in his deep voice, one hand stroking his fierce mustachios. "As I told you once in King Haarahld's presence, I believe in God, I believe God has a plan for all men, everywhere, and I believe it's the duty of every man and woman to stand and contend for Light against the Darkness. That was the truth, as you confirmed for yourself, but I'm afraid I wasn't able to tell you all the truth then. Today I can."

Paityr Wylsynn's face was ashen, despite his deeply tanned complexion.

Twilight had settled beyond the windows while Merlin, Cayleb, and Staynair took turns describing the Journal of Saint Zherneau. The blows to Wylsynn's certainty had come hard and fast, and he knew now why Merlin was present. It was hard enough to believe the truth-even to accept that it might be the truth-with the seijin sitting there watching his face in the archbishop's office when Wylsynn had known he was thousands of miles away.

Of course, the fact he's here doesn't necessarily prove everything they've just told you is the truth, Paityr, does it? his Schuelerite training demanded. The Writ tells us there are such things as demons, and who but a demon could have made the journey Merlin claims to have made in this "recon skimmer" of his?

Yet even as he asked himself that, he knew he didn't believe for a moment that Merlin was a demon. In many ways, he wished he did. Things would have been so much simpler, and he would never have known his deep and abiding faith had been built entirely upon the most monstrous lie in human history, if only he'd been able to believe that. The priest in him, and the young seminarian he'd been even before he took his vows, cried out to turn away. To reject the lies of Shan-wei's demon henchman before they completed the corruption of his soul-a corruption which must have begun well before this moment if he could accept even for an instant that Merlin wasn't a demon.

And he couldn't reject them as lies. That was the problem. He couldn't.

And not just because of all those examples of "technology" Merlin's just demonstrated, either, he thought starkly. All those doubts of yours, all those questions about how God could have permitted someone like Clyntahn to assume such power. They're part of the reason you believe every single thing these people have just told you. But all the things they've said still don't answer the questions! Unless the answer is simply so obvious you're afraid to reach out and touch it. If it's all truly a lie, if there truly are no Archangels and never were, then what if God Himself was never anything but a lie? That would explain His permitting Clyntahn to murder and kill and maim in His name, wouldn't it? Because He wouldn't be doing anything of the sort ... since He never existed in the first place.

"I'm sorry, Father," Merlin said softly. "I'm sorry we've had to inflict this on you. It's different for me. One thing my experience here on Safehold has taught me is that I'll never truly be able to understand the shock involved in having all that absolute, documented certainty snatched out from under you."

"That's ... a very good way to describe it, actually, Seijin Merlin. Or should I call you Nimue Alban?"

"The Archbishop and I have an ongoing argument about that," Merlin said with an odd, almost whimsical smile. "To be honest, Father, I still haven't decided exactly what I really am. On the other hand, I've also decided there's no option but to continue on the assumption that I am Nimue Alban-or that she's a part of me, at any rate-because the life or death of the human species depends on the completion of the mission she agreed to undertake."

"Because of these ... Gbaba?" Wylsynn pronounced the unfamiliar word carefully.

"That's certainly the greatest, most pressing part of it," Merlin agreed. "Sooner or later, humanity is going to encounter them again. If we do that without knowing what's coming, it's highly unlikely we'll be fortunate enough to survive a second time. But there's more to it than that, too. The society created here on Safehold is a straitjacket, at best. At worst, it's the greatest intellectual and spiritual tyranny in history. We-all of us, Father Paityr, including this PICA sitting in front of you-have a responsibility, a duty, to break that tyranny. Even if there is no God, the moral responsibility remains. And if there is a God, as I believe there is, we have a responsibility to Him, as well."

Wylsynn stared at the PICA-the machine-and he felt a sudden almost irresistible need to laugh insanely. Merlin wasn't even alive, and yet he was telling Wylsynn he believed in God? And what was Wylsynn supposed to believe in now?

"I know what you're thinking at this moment, Paityr," Staynair said quietly.

Wylsynn's gray eyes snapped to him, wide with disbelief that anyone could truly know that, yet that incredulity faded as he gazed into the archbishop's face.

"Not the exact words you're using to flagellate yourself, of course," Staynair continued. "All of us find our own ways to do that. But I know the doubts, the sense of betrayal-of violation. All these years, you've deeply and sincerely believed in the Holy Writ, in The Testimonies, in Mother Church, in the Archangels, and in God. You've believed, my son, and you've given your life to that belief. And now you've discovered it's all a lie, all built on deliberate fabrications for the express purpose of preventing you from ever reaching out to the truth. It's worse than being physically violated, because you've just discovered your very soul was raped by merely mortal men and women, pretending to be gods, who died centuries before your own birth."

He paused, and Wylsynn looked at him silently, unable to speak, and Staynair shook his head slowly.

"I can't and won't try to dictate the 'right way' to deal with what you're feeling at this moment," the archbishop said quietly. "That would violate my own most deeply held beliefs. But I will ask you to think about this. The Church of God Awaiting wasn't created by God. It was built by men and women ... men and women who'd seen a more terrible tragedy than anything you and I could possibly imagine. Who'd been broken and damaged by that experience, and who were prepared to do anything-anything at all-to prevent it from happening again. I believe they were terribly, horribly mistaken in what they did, yet I've come to the conclusion over the years since I first discovered Saint Zherneau's journal-and even more in the time since I've known Merlin, and gained access to Owl's records of pre-Safeholdian history-that for all their unspeakable crimes, they weren't really monsters. Oh, they did monstrous things in plenty, and understanding the why can't excuse the what of their actions. I'm not trying to say it could, and I'm sure they did what they did for all the flawed, personal motives we could imagine, as well, including the hunger for power and the need to control. But that doesn't change the truth of the fact that they genuinely believed the ultimate survival of the human race depended upon their actions.

"Do I think that justifies what they did? No. Do I think it makes the final product of their lie any less monstrous? No. Am I prepared to close my eyes, turn away and allow that lie to continue unchallenged forever? A thousand times no. But neither do I think they acted out of pure evil and self-interest. And neither do I believe anything they might have done indicts God. Remember that they built their lie not out of whole cloth, but out of bits and pieces they took away from the writings and the beliefs-and the faith-of thousands of generations which had groped and felt their way towards God without benefit of the unbroken, unchallenged-and untrue-scripture and history which we possess. And so I come to my final rhetorical question. Do I believe the fact that men and women made unscrupulous by desperation and terror misused and abused religion and God Himself means God doesn't exist? A million times no, my son.

"I can no longer prove that to you by showing you the incontrovertible, inviolable word set down by the immortal Archangels. I can only ask you to reach inside yourself once more, to seek the wellsprings of faith and to look at all the wonders of the universe-and all the still greater wonders which are about to become available to you-and decide for yourself. Merlin and I had a discussion about this very subject the night he and I first told Cayleb the truth. I wasn't aware then that I was following in the footsteps of another, far more ancient philosopher when I asked him what I could possibly lose by believing in God, but now I ask you the same question, Paityr. What do you lose by believing in a loving, compassionate God Who's finally found a way to reach out to His children once more? Will it make you an evil man? Lead you into the same sort of actions that ensnared the real Langhorne and the real Bedard? Or will you continue to reach out in love to those about you? To do good, when the opportunity to do good comes to you? To reach the end of your life knowing you've truly labored to leave the world and all in it a better place than it might otherwise have been?

"And if there is no God, if all there is beyond this life is a dreamless, eternal sleep-only nothingness-what will your faith have cost you then?" The archbishop smiled suddenly. "Do you expect to feel cheated or swindled when you realize there was no God waiting beyond that threshold? Only two things can lie on the other side of death, Paityr. It's what Merlin or Owl might describe as 'a binary solution set.' There's either nothingness, or some sort of continued existence, whether it leads us to what we think of now as God or not. And if it's nothingness, then whether or not you were 'cheated' is meaningless. And if there is a continued existence which doesn't contain that Whom I think of as God, then I'll simply have to start over learning the truth again, won't I?"

Paityr gazed at him for several more seconds, then drew a deep breath.

"I don't know what to believe at this moment, Your Eminence," he said finally. "I never imagined I could feel such turmoil as I'm feeling right now. Intellectually, I believe you when you say you've experienced the same things, and I can see you truly have found a way for your faith to survive those experiences. I envy that ... I think. And the fact that I don't know whether I truly envy your certainty or resent it as yet another manifestation of the lie sums up the heart of my confusion. I'll need time, and a great deal of it, before I can put my spiritual house back in order and say 'Yes, this is where I stand.'"

"Of course you will," Staynair said simply. "Surely you don't think anyone else has ever simply taken this in stride and continued without missing a step!"

"I don't really know what I think right now, Your Eminence!" Wylsynn was astonished by the note of genuine humor in his own response.

"Then you're about where everyone is at this point, Father," Merlin told him, and smiled with a bittersweet crookedness. "And believe me, I may not have had to grapple with the knowledge that I'd been lied to all my life, but waking up in Nimue's Cave and realizing I'd been dead for the better part of a thousand years was just a little difficult to process."

"I can believe that," Wylsynn said, yet even as he spoke his eyes had darkened, and his expression turned grim.

"What is it, Paityr?" Staynair asked quickly but softly, and the intendant shook his head hard.

"It's just ... ironic that Merlin should mention 'a thousand years,'" he said. "You see, not everything about the Archangels and Mother Church was set forth in the Writ or The Testimonies after all, Your Eminence."

.III.

A Recon Skimmer, Above Carter's Ocean Merlin Athrawes leaned back in his flight couch, gazing up through the canopy at the distant moon. The waters of Carter's Ocean stretched out far below him like an endless black mirror, touched with silver highlights. The stars were distant, glittering pinpricks overhead, but ahead of him lay a wall of cloud, the back edge of a massive weather front moving steadily eastward across Corisande.

It all seemed incredibly peaceful, restful even. It wasn't, of course. The winds along the leading edge of that front were less powerful than those which had battered Cayleb further north, but they were quite powerful enough. And they were going to catch up with Dawn Star in the next few hours. The galleon and her escorts were passing through Coris Strait, about to enter South Reach Sound southeast of Corisande before looping back westward through White Horse Reach to the Corisandian capital of Manchyr, and Merlin wondered if the bad weather was going to be his ally or his comeuppance. Getting on and off a sailing ship in the middle of the ocean without being detected was a nontrivial challenge, even for a PICA. As it was, he'd officially retreated to his cabin to "meditate," and Sharleyan and the rest of her guard detail would see to it that he wasn't disturbed. He'd even left a rope trailing helpfully from the galleon's sternwalk so he could shinny back aboard, hopefully unnoticed. After so long, it had become almost a well-established routine.

Except, of course, that if the weather's as bad as it looks like being tonight, there're going to be people keeping an anxious watch on little things like rigging and sails or rogue waves ... any one of whom might just happen to notice the odd seijin climbing up a rope out of the ocean in the middle of the night.

His lips twitched at the thought, yet he wasn't really worried about it. He'd be able to spot any lookout before the lookout could spot him, and a PICA could easily spend an hour or two submerged in the ship's wake, clinging to a rope and waiting patiently until the coast was clear. Not only that, but he'd be back aboard several hours before local dawn, with plenty of darkness to help cover his return. In fact, that was the real reason for the timing of the conference with Father Paityr. They'd had to make sufficient allowance for Merlin's transit, and he'd had to plan on both departing and returning under cover of night if he wanted to be certain he wasn't observed.

And that's exactly what you're going to be doing, he told himself. So why don't you stop worrying about that and start worrying about what Father Paityr just told you, instead?

His brief almost-smile disappeared, and he shook his head.

I guess fair's fair. You've cheerfully torn lots of other people's worlds apart by telling the truth about Langhorne and Bedard. It's about time somebody returned the compliment.

He closed his eyes and his perfect PICA's memory replayed the conversation in Maikel Staynair's office.

"What do you mean 'Not everything about the Archangels and Mother Church was set forth in the Writ or The Testimonies,' my son?" Staynair asked, his eyes narrowing with concern as Paityr Wylsynn's tone registered.

"I mean there's more than one reason my family's always been so deeply involved in the affairs of Mother Church, Your Eminence."

Wylsynn's face was tight, his voice harrowed with mingled bitterness, anger, and lingering shock at what he'd already been told. He looked around the others' faces and drew a deep breath.

"The tradition of my family's always been that we were directly descended from the Archangel Schueler," he said harshly. "All my life, that's been a source of great joy to me-and of a pride I've struggled against as something unbecoming in any son of Mother Church. And, of course, it was also something Mother Church and the Inquisition would flatly have denied could have been possible. That's one of the reasons my family was always so careful to keep the tradition secret. But we were also specifically charged to keep it so-according to the tradition-when certain knowledge was left in our possession."

Merlin's molycirc nerves tingled with sudden apprehension, but he kept his face expressionless as he cocked his head.